The pain and sorrow of saying farewell to so many books
I love books. I love the look of them the feel of them, the smell of them. But we have too many – or at least my wife Vee says so.
It is true that we have thousands and that, for years now, I have been forced to adopt a policy of ‘one in, one out’. But Vee keeps pressing me to get rid of more. She says that we need the space.
This weekend, I was compelled to address the issue of our travel books – almost 100 of them. Vee was insistent that we didn’t need them – we’re not going back to those countries and, even if we did, we would want up-dated guides. In truth, I don’t even buy travel books now because they are so heavy and it is much easier to download them to my iPad.
But getting rid of books that accompanied me around the world over the past 30 years? Heartbreaking. But I had to do it. So, so sad.
Footnote (29/3/14): Now all the foreign language dictionaries and phrase books have had to go.